Charter Watcher

Charter Watcher is a personal project of Charter Communications customer, privacy advocate, and computer security consultant Jesse Worley. It is intended to be a single location for all of the available information regarding Charter’s wiretapping and advertising program.

Although Charter bills this program as a “service enhancement,” there is nothing about it which benefits the customer. Individual internet users are monitored at the packet level, with their information being sold to a third-party advertising company. This means that any web site visited, email sent or received, instant message sent or received, or search term entered is captured and turned over in a semi-anonymous fashion to a company with no legal requirement to safeguard customer privacy.

Privacy advocates and Congressmen alike have raised alarms about this program, suggesting that it does not protect consumers and may additionally violate a number of federal laws. Our concerns have been blatantly ignored. Charter Communications elected to initiate this program, despite the many requests to the contrary, on June 1, 2008.